Historical information

Miners from Snake Valley lobbied the Victorian Government in 1855 to make land available for sale for farming purposes as an alternative occupation and income for people who wished to stay in the region but move away from gold mining. A secondary motivation was to increase the supply of fresh produce and decrease prices of items that otherwise needed to be transported from Melbourne or other regions. Forty-three country lots were initially offered in the Three Mile area, ranging in size from two to ninety acres and costing from £1 to £3 per acre. An additional eighty-five country lots were auctioned later in the year, in addition to many smaller suburban lots. More lots were offered than sold, initially, but this represented conditions of sale requiring the total purchase cost up front which many people interested in purchasing could not afford, especially as land purchased for farming would accrue substantial additional costs for clearing and labour before becoming productive. Further lobbying activities and the election of parliamentary members sympathetic to the cause took place through the 1850s. Ovens Parliamentary Member, Daniel Cameron, was re-elected in 1856 on a platform of surveying the land for public selection with deferred payment options. Land reform remained an issue in the area through the 1850s and early 1860s, impacting broader decisions in the new State of Victoria relating to voting rights, use of Crown land and the farming of land that wasn't always suitable for the purpose. This photograph depicts Beechworth in approximately 1900, after several waves of land sales resulted in increasingly levels of development.

Lantern slides, sometimes called 'magic lantern' slides, are glass plates on which an image has been secured for the purpose of projection. Glass slides were etched or hand-painted for this purpose from the Eighteenth Century but the process became more popular and accessible to the public with the development of photographic-emulsion slides used with a 'Magic Lantern' device in the mid-Nineteenth Century. Photographic lantern slides comprise a double-negative emulsion layer (forming a positive image) between thin glass plates that are bound together. A number of processes existed to form and bind the emulsion layer to the base plate, including the albumen, wet plate collodion, gelatine dry plate and woodburytype techniques. Lantern slides and magic lantern technologies are seen as foundational precursors to the development of modern photography and film-making techniques.

Significance

This glass slide is significant because it provides insight into Beechworth's built environment and infrastructure in the early Twentieth Century, around the time of Australia's Federation. It is also an example of an early photographic and film-making technology in use in regional Victoria in the time period.

Physical description

Thin translucent sheet of glass with a square-edged image printed on the front and framed in a black backing. It is held together by metal strips to secure the edges of the slide.